Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars
Click to get our FREE MOBILE APP and stay connected
| PentecostalTheology.comIn Romans 8:35 and 8:39, is it “Christ’s love” and “God’s love” [subjective/objective]? Or, “love for Christ” and “love for God”? I can see it both ways but I think the context is about endurance and Paul is saying that nothing would be able to separate the saints from their love for God and his Christ. Here is the context which I modified from “love of” to “love for”:
Young’s Literal Translation (YLT):
Rom 8:35 Who shall separate us from the love for Christ? shall
tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or
peril, or sword? Rom 8:36 As it is written, For thy sake we are
killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.
Rom 8:37 Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through
him that loved us [God]. Rom 8:38 For I am persuaded, that neither
death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor
things present, nor things to come, Rom 8:39 Nor height, nor depth,
nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love for
God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
If it is “love for God” then the definite article refers to the love “shed abroad” in the believers’ hearts:
YLT
Rom 5:3 And not only so , but we also boast in the tribulations,
knowing that the tribulation doth work endurance; Rom 5:4 and the
endurance, experience; and the experience, hope; Rom 5:5 and the
hope doth not make ashamed, because the love of God hath been poured
forth in our hearts through the Holy Spirit that hath been given to
us.Rom 8:28 And we have known that to those loving God all things do
work together for good, to those who are called according to purpose;